Improving Traffic Safety Culture:
The Journey Ahead

I know that roughly 43,000
Americans are killed each year in
traffic crashes, and that traffic
crashes are the leading cause of
death for children, teens and
young adults in the U.S. It is what
motivates me and my associates to
learn more about what can be done
to reduce this public health crisis.
The average motorist in this country
does not appreciate the full
implications of these tragedies.

Over the past several decades,
the risks associated with motor
vehicle travel have been substantially
lowered. But recently,
progress has slowed, despite the
fact that much research suggests
that we could probably cut this toll
in half or better if only we would
implement a few proven lifesaving
countermeasures that we already
know about. So, why don't we?

That is the central question
that emerged from a workshop the
AAA Foundation convened of
nationally recognized traffic safety
experts to consider a long-term
traffic safety research agenda.

The group consensus was that
we as individuals and our society
on the whole are simply way too
willing to accept the toll from these
traffic crashes, apparently as an
inevitable consequence of the
mobility we enjoy.

At the same time, contrast
this apparent "complacency" with what has happened since 9/11.
Americans have accepted the
expenditure of billions of dollars
to combat terrorism, and have
accepted innumerable inconveniences
and intrusions into their
privacy that previously would have
been considered unacceptable. When
we get "outraged" about something,
our society can marshal the
requisite resolve and resources to
make a difference!

Although traffic safety has
improved, we're not doing as well
as many other countries. Prior to
the mid 1960's, the U.S. enjoyed
the greatest level of traffic safety in
the world by any measure; whereas
today, the U.S. has fallen behind
most of Western Europe in terms of
fatalities per mile driven. Evidence
suggests that these countries have
achieved-and are still achieving-
greater safety gains than the U.S
because they are willing to set more
ambitious safety performance goals
than we are, and because they are
willing to do more to achieve them.

The official safety performance
goal of the U.S. Department of
Transportation is to reduce the
motor vehicle fatality rate to one
fatality per 100 million vehicle
miles traveled by 2008. The most
recent statistics reveal that the U.S.
has just seen its first increase in the
fatality rate in two decades. We are
no longer moving in the "right direction" too slowly-as we had
been for the past decade-now,
we're moving in the wrong direction.
Even if we were to achieve
this goal, we would still be writing
off roughly 30,000 annual deaths
as the socially accepted price of
our mobility, and that's before
accounting for the projected travel
increases.

This provides a stark contrast to
the picture in much of Europe and
Australia, where traffic injuries,
deaths, and rates of both, have
dropped substantially over the past
decades; where the target is a safe
system that minimizes opportunities
for crashes to occur and virtually
precludes disabling or fatal outcomes
by limiting crash severity;
and where the measuring stick is
the actual number of traffic casualties,
rather than a rate that accepts
the notion that increases in driving
must lead to increases in crashes,
injuries and deaths.

To make real progress, we must
transform our way of thinking. The
AAA Foundation has taken on
"traffic safety culture" as a long
term research focus area. Working
together with GHSA and other traffic
safety organizations, we can and
will make a difference!